Rick Sammon's Canon EOS Digital Rebel Personal Training Photo Workshop

Customer Review: Much less than anticiapted
I thought this would be an introductory level resource for Canon cameras. However it is really a series of very short, almost anecdotal statements by Sammon, each surrounded by 1 - 2 minutes of title graphics with a generic Macintosh iDVD music bed that quickly becomes annoying. You spend most of your time watching the titles of the chapter and the review of the chapter, all with the same monotonous music. The title and review often take longer than the actual lessons. You might watch 20 seconds of the title, get about 60 seconds of incomplete advice, then another 60 seconds of text review of the same incomplete advice. For instance his complete advice for the Chapter on Sports photography consists of him telling you to put the camera in the "Sports" mode. No kidding. Then we have the obligatory music/picture montage that repeats the advice about putting the camera in the sports mode.
Customer Review: For The Beginner
This is a great DVD for the beginning Digital SLR user. I highly recommend that if you are ready to jump right in, start here. My only complaint about this particular DVD is the navigation of the DVD Menu. There are great tips for the beginner and time is spent on how to use the manual controls.

In this article, I'd like to give you a glimpse of what you can expect in online digital photography courses - photographing landscapes. There are many photographers in this world who seem to favor landscape photography more over any of the other types of photography.

Personally speaking, I like it when my photographs have some element of life in it, whether it be human or not, but I can still see how sweeping shots of rolling hills, toiling seas and endless skies does have an impact on the viewer. To my mind there are two distinctly different types of landscape photography around. That of the natural landscape photography, and that of the urban landscape photography.

Both have their pros and both have their cons, and its really up to the photographer and their sense of imagination to get across to us a grand scene. Be that as it may though, to get a decent landscape photography shot you dont need to travel to far and distant lands, in fact you dont even need to leave your home.

To start your landscape photography you can just take a ride on out to your back, or front yard, and have a quick go there to see how well you can make this everyday setting into something extraordinary. Of course the fun with traveling to far and distant lands to get your landscape shots is that most of the hard work has already been done for you.

The scenes have already been set to perfection and theres always going to be some really great vantage point that you can go to, to take your pictures. The trouble with going it at home is that you need to set the shot up for yourself. You need to see the good in your yard and you need to be able to translate that into something that doesnt look like your back yard.

Its not an easy task, but it is well worth the try as you open yourself up to the vast array of possibilities and you learn to think outside of the box. So the next time you go to far and distant lands you wont just be taking the same old boring shot that everyone before you has, instead youll be looking at the various possibilities to be had from different angles and how you can possibly accomplish it.

To me, thats the mark of a true photographer, the ability to see things outside of the perspective of the normal mind and to see the extraordinary.

Are you looking for information about online digital photography courses? If you want to learn some amazing digital photography secrets that the gurus won't tell you, then visit http://www.digital-photo-secrets.info for more information.

Digital Cameras

SanDisk 4 GB Extreme III SDHC Card (SDSDRX3-4096-A21, Retail Package)

SanDisk Extreme III expands its award-winning, professional line of memory cards with a new 4GB SDHC (Secured Digital High Capacity) card. The SanDisk Extreme III 4GB SDHC memory card offers speed, performance and reliability to ensure you get your photos every time. A 4GB memory card can store more than 2000 high-resolution pictures or up to 8 hours of MPEG 4 video.
Customer Review: Excellent
Second one I've purchased ... price was excellent and performance was everything you'd expect from SanDisk quality. FAST!
Custom;Customer Review: Just great!
We purchased a couple of these when they had an awesome rebate program going on. Our main use is for our Canon Rebel XT(Yes, I know it takes compact flash cards but you can get an inexpensive reader that works wonders with it and lets it work in the Canon). First, the card comes with some nice stuff! The USB Card Reader it comes with is nice and handy. You plug it into a USB port and plug the card in to it and it reads very quickly! It also has a nice, hard plastic carrying case that it comes with. To top it off, it also comes with a nice carrying pouch too! The speed on this thing is amazing! With the Canon we have it takes picture after picture with no lag. There has been no error messages with the card either. With 4gbs of storage this card is a must have if you're taking lots of pictures and need a fast card!

When you are shooting a group of people, you should always make sure to have the necessary depth of field so that important details do not fall out of focus. This is not trivial to achieve. Therefore, you must pay particular attention when using telephoto lenses and when shooting particularly close to your subject, as both cases lead to a reduced depth of field. The same holds true for wide apertures, too.

Which is the most critical group portrait as far as depth of field is concerned? Sure enough, the most difficult is the close-up. If you do not have enough depth of field to focus completely your subjects, it is pivotal that you sharp focus at least the eyes and the frontal planes of all the subjects. This means that the lips and the tip of the nose must be sharp. Ears take second place in order of importance: keep them in focus if you can.

A good photographer knows that the depth of field of a lens is both behind and in front of the point of focus; besides, it is usually greater behind than it is in front. Therefore, it is an error focusing on the nearest part of the subject. Instead, you should focus between the nearest and the farthest points of your subjects, about one third within. In case of doubt, keep it simple and focus on the eyes. This has the additional advantage of focusing on a highly contrasting region (the eyes), making it an easier operation.

As for 3/4- and full-length portraits, it is much easier to focus them properly, as the greater distance from the subject makes the depth of field greater. Anyhow, all the aforementioned recommendations still holds true. If a blurred background is desired, just use a wide aperture.

If many people are involved in a group portrait, it could be taxing to fit all the individuals in the same focusing plane, even in full-length portraits. This is where the skilled photographer takes over and through careful posing of the subject and choosing a good vantage point can expertly accomplish the task.

The theory to work the problem out is quite simple. Just pose all the individuals on the same plane and make sure the camera is pointing perpendicularly to that plane. Easy, isn't it? Unfortunately putting this prescription into practice is a whole other ballgame. The simplest posing strategy is having the individuals in the back of the group lean forward and the people at the front lean backward. This will reduce the depth of field required for a sharp image.

There is a very clever trick to point the camera as perpendicular to the group plane as possible. Your group will typically consist of some people in the front row with their faces lower than the people behind. For instance people in the front row can be crouched and people behind them standing. So, if you raise the camera and point it downward, a better alignment will occur. This, in turn, has the additional advantage of averaging the relative dimensions of the people in the group; otherwise, the people in front would appear larger than those behind.

If your group is very huge, yet another consideration must be taken into account. If you line up all the people in the group in a straight line, those at the sides will be farther away from the camera than those in the center. This is no good, because you want all of them on the same focus plane. So the solution here is to arch the group of people by having them lie in an arc of a circle: let those in the center step back and those at the ends step forward and adjust the others accordingly. All of them will now be at the same distance from your camera, making it easier to sharp focus the entire group.

More articles about photography here.

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